Red Eyes MC Books 4 - 6

by Blair Grey

  “Nah, nothing to do with my career,” I said. “I mean, I love what I’m doing and where I am at the moment, but at the same time, I think they’d be fair about giving me the maternity leave that I needed. I’m not worried about that.”

  “Then what?” Braxton pressed.

  I blushed and took a sip of my orange juice. “Well, I guess I just always figured that if I was going to have kids, I’d be married first,” I blurted out, feeling embarrassed. “Not that I’m trying to put any pressure on you.”

  Braxton laughed. “No, that makes sense,” he said.

  “It doesn’t, not really,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not like I think you’re going to run out on me if I pop out a kid. I know you’re responsible, and I know you’d take care of me. Of us. That’s not what I’m afraid of.” I paused. “I’m not even afraid of anything, honestly. I mean, maybe that we’d have a kid and somehow manage to really screw it up, but mostly I’m just, I don’t know.”

  I was babbling, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.

  “I guess it’s probably one of those weird society things, you know? You grow up with the expectation that you fall in love, get married, and then have the kids. There’s such a stigma against people who do it the other way around. I guess it’s better now, but all the same, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Braxton looked like he was laughing, and I was tempted to join him. “God, I need more coffee before we have conversations like this. You know that,” I told him.

  I was about to start babbling again. At least, until Braxton said, “So you need to be married first. Why not? We could get married.”

  I stared at him, wondering if I had just heard him correctly. “Did you just say what I think you just said?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Braxton said evenly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small red velvet box, nudging it across the table toward me and flipping open the lid. The ring was beautiful, the band simple but decorated with three beautiful diamonds in the center.

  “Braxton,” I breathed, wondering if this was real. Was it possible that I was dreaming this?

  “Put it on,” Braxton said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Because I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer, Mia Lamb. You’re going to be my wife. That’s just how it is.”

  I laughed giddily. It wasn’t the kind of proposal that I had ever expected. He wasn’t exactly asking me. But then again, I had no reason to protest. No reason to say no. Of course I was going to marry him. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone else.

  I reached out with shaking fingers and slid the ring out of the box, slowly putting it on my left ring finger. It fit perfectly, as though it had been made for me.

  I grinned across the table at Braxton. “All right,” I said. “If you’re going to be so bossy about it, does that mean you’re going to plan the whole thing too?”

  “I don’t know, that sounds like a ton of work,” Braxton joked. “Maybe we can just elope instead.”

  “You’re really ready to have those children, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Braxton snorted. “Can’t let Landon hit all the milestones without me,” he said. “But that’s not what all this is about.” His eyes practically smoldered as he continued to stare at me. “I like the idea of calling you my wife. And I like the idea of your belly swelling with our child inside of you.”

  “You just better not get me pregnant with twins,” I warned. “At least, not the first time.”

  “So we’re going to have more than one time?” Braxton asked gleefully.

  I shrugged. “I was always friends with Maggie. And I know you’re close with Landon as well. And Belle, even though you guys didn’t grow up together. If we’re going to have kids, I want them to have that. Someone that they can always rely on.”

  The thing was, I knew that even if we only had one kid, they would find someone to rely on eventually. That was what I had with Braxton now. Even talking about Maggie, about the darkest points in my life, came easily now. And I knew that Braxton felt the same way with me. He definitely still missed Landon, even though they got to see each other at least every couple months, but I knew that a lot of his loneliness was gone now that he had me.

  I also liked the idea of a few little Braxtons running around the house, all bright-eyed and energetic. They would be a handful though—that was for sure. I liked the idea of building a family together with him, though. It had been a while since I’d had a family, and I could only imagine that this one would be ten thousand times better than I could ever have dreamed.

  “I have another surprise for you,” Braxton said suddenly, smirking at me.

  “Jesus, I haven’t forgotten about my birthday or something, have I?” I joked.

  Braxton laughed. “Come on; you know that I just like to spoil you sometimes,” he said. He wiped his hands off on his napkin and got up, taking my hand and leading me along with him. For a moment, I was distracted by how the diamonds sparkled.

  Engaged. We’re really engaged.

  He led me out to the driveway, and I noticed there was a tarp out there covering a motorcycle. “Braxton,” I protested as he pulled the tarp off one of the nicest bikes that I’d ever seen. It was a brilliant cherry red with chrome fixtures, and the thing that immediately sprang to mind was the ice cream parlor that we’d gone to in Sarasota when we’d first been together.

  “I know I’ve had a lot of late nights with the boys lately, but part of it has been that I was working on this,” he told me. “Trying to get it all ready for you.”

  “I have a perfectly good bike,” I protested.

  “You have a piece of junk that I bought you because I knew you were going to crash it at least once while you were learning,” Braxton said. “Anyway, this one is custom built, just for you. It’s got a bit of a narrower seat that should be more comfortable for you to straddle on the longer rides that we do. And a couple other tweaks. You should at least come here and try it out.”

  I stepped hesitantly forward and swung onto the bike, practically groaning as I settled into the nice, new leather seat, my hands running along the handlebars. “All right, I take it back,” I said. “I’m keeping this.”

  Braxton laughed. “I had a feeling you might think that,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss on my lips.

  “But what if I crash it?” I asked worriedly.

  “Then it’s a good thing I know my way around a bike and can repair it,” Braxton said.

  “How do you know you can repair it?” I fretted. “We don’t even know what I might do to it.”

  Braxton laughed. “If it’s anything that I can’t handle, Will can help me out, I’m sure. He’s been doing some really great stuff at his new shop. And if it’s really terrible, then maybe I’ll just build you a new bike. I want my wife to be riding around in style.”

  I laughed delightedly. “You’re the best husband already,” I told him seriously. “Can we hurry up and get changed so we can go for our ride?”

  “Let’s go,” Braxton said, but after helping me off the bike, he pulled me into his arms, kissing me until I was breathless. “You know, we could also spend the day inside celebrating our engagement,” he offered as we broke apart.

  I giggled and pushed him away. “We’ll do that tonight,” I promised him. “Or maybe we’ll find a place where we can pull off and do it along the drive.”

  Braxton’s eyes sparkled with wicked glee. “Who am I to argue with that?” he asked.

  Not Controllable

  NOT CONTROLLABLE

  By Blair Grey

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 Blair Grey

  1

  Grant

  When I arrived at the clubhouse on Monday
for the weekly Red Eyes meeting, the place was empty. I checked my watch. I was only ten minutes early. I sighed as I sat down on one of the couches to wait for everyone else to arrive. I had barely gotten a taste of what being part of a busy motorcycle club was like. Right after I had joined, Will dropped out to focus on his relationship with Belle and his education, and he was hardly around anymore. Next, Marcus left for the Northwest with his girlfriend. Then, Landon had gone to Florida on a mission and stayed there with a girl he met in Sarasota.

  Now out of the core members, there was just our leader, Ray, our treasurer, Cameron, our main enforcer, Braxton, and me. There were other guys who were around every so often, but they weren’t full members of the club. They had outside lives and only joined us when we needed more bodies, and they usually didn’t come to these weekly meetings.

  It was starting to feel like a pretty small group, which was kind of nice since it meant I really got to know Ray, Cameron, and Braxton. But at the same time, Ray was old enough to be my dad, and Cameron and I had pretty much nothing in common outside the club. I didn’t want Braxton to feel like I was always hanging off him or asking him to get drinks with me either.

  So instead, I felt like I had to look elsewhere for friends, but that defied the reason I joined the club to begin with.

  The truth was, I hadn’t had the best childhood, and things had gotten pretty bleak when I’d been a teenager. I’d been adrift for a long time before Ray took me under his wing. Especially over the past few months with Braxton mentoring me, the club had given me a sense of purpose that had been sorely lacking in my life.

  But it still wasn’t everything that I wanted it to be. Apparently, there were some voids that it just couldn’t fill.

  I was stirred out of my thoughts by the arrival of the other guys. Braxton dropped onto the couch next to me, while Cameron sat in one of the armchairs. “How’s it going, kid?” Braxton asked, but I didn’t have a chance to respond before Ray came in, the unofficial start of the meeting.

  To be honest, Ray didn’t have half the presence that he normally did. He seemed slightly smaller, folded in on himself. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes as though he hadn’t slept in weeks. The decline had been happening rapidly. Three weeks ago, he had been just as lively as ever. At first, I thought that he knew something that he wasn’t sharing yet—like maybe another MC was trying to move in on our territory.

  But it wouldn’t be the first time that had happened, and I’d never seen Ray look like this before. And as more time passed and the worse he looked, the more I was sure there was something going on with his health that he wasn’t telling us.

  Still, there was no way to approach that conversation. At least, no way that I could. Maybe one of the guys who had known him longer, like Cameron, knew what was going on. As for me, I was left just hoping that it was nothing serious and that he would get over it. He still went about his day-to-day duties like nothing was wrong, so I had to assume that was true.

  It was too impossible to think otherwise. Without Ray, I wasn’t sure the MC would survive. I was pretty sure he was one of the founders, and he had definitely been part of it for longer than anyone else, even the noncore members of the club. Who could possibly take his place?

  Ray cleared his throat and started going over club business, covering tasks for the week as well as our latest profits. There was a little bit about the sheriff still wanting to crack down on illegal activity around Las Cruces, but Ray didn’t seem too worried about the effect that might have on Red Eyes. We had come to a sort of understanding with the sheriff when Marcus handed over the Unknowns, an old threat to the Red Eyes, to him.

  In short, there wasn’t much of interest, just the usual things. In some ways, I was relieved to hear that. In other ways, I had to admit that I was kind of itching for a little more action. I still felt like I needed to prove myself to the other members of the club. But there was no way to prove myself when I was just tagging along with Braxton when he went to get money from the local businesses.

  Then again, any sort of altercation now could be disastrous. We just plain didn’t have the numbers to fight for our territory, not without calling in all of our auxiliaries, which would almost be embarrassing. We needed new blood. Especially so that I wasn’t the bottom of the totem pole anymore.

  “Grant, I have something I’d like to discuss with you,” Ray said, as he wrapped up the meeting.

  My eyes shot toward my hairline, and I glanced over at Braxton, wondering if he knew something that I didn’t. Was this it? Were they going to let me go on missions on my own now? Or was he kicking me out? I tried to think if there was anything that I had done recently that might warrant kicking me out, but nothing came to mind. I’d been careful to follow Ray’s directions, and I’d tried to learn from Braxton’s example. I knew that, originally, he had thought that I was too much of a pussy to ever make it in the MC, but I’d been working hard to prove him otherwise.

  I swallowed hard and followed Ray into his office, sitting nervously across from him.

  I thought I saw the hint of a smile on Ray’s face as he poured drinks for both of us, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. To be honest, I didn’t drink as much as the other guys in the club, but I took a sip of the scotch nearly as soon as Ray handed it to me. I needed to calm down a little. Ray didn’t seem like he was going to kick me out.

  “I’m sure you realize that having four main members in an MC like ours is just asking for trouble,” Ray said. “Fortunately, I’ve found a few new guys.”

  “Oh,” I said, wondering just how to respond to that. Why hadn’t he mentioned this in the meeting with everyone else? Why bring me into his office to tell me this? But he didn’t keep me wondering for long.

  “I’m putting you in charge of molding the new guys into what we need for the MC,” Ray continued gravely.

  I stared at him for a moment, wondering if this was some sort of test. “Braxton would be better for that,” I finally said, when it became clear that Ray was waiting for a response from me.

  Ray’s lips curved into even more of a smile. “I disagree,” he said, shaking his head. He stared seriously at me. “I’ve seen a change in you recently. In the way that you approach club business.” He paused. “In fact, I think that if you continue down the path that you’ve been on, you could one day take over the MC. Where Braxton is all for fighting any possible threat, you’re able to approach things logically. I can tell you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty or to resort to violence. At the same time, that’s not your first impulse. And that’s what an MC needs in this day and age if you don’t want to get locked up in prison or booted out of town.”

  I blinked, surprised at his words. I couldn’t help feeling flattered. Of course, Ray was keeping an eye on me, but I hadn’t realized that he was so impressed by my work. Not that there had been too much opportunity to show him what I was made of, but I had been there to back up Braxton on a couple of fights with his girlfriend’s crazy ex, among other things. I guess Ray had been watching all of it, and I had somehow managed to prove myself without even knowing that I was being tested.

  At the same time, I wasn’t sure I was ready to start training recruits. “I still think that maybe—”

  Ray cut me off before I could finish. “I have faith in you,” he shrugged. “But I’ll have my eye on you. If things don’t go the way I expect they will, then maybe I’ll have Braxton step in. I think you’ll do just fine, though.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but I knew better than to argue with him. Instead, it was clear that this conversation was over. “Well, let me know when you want me to start,” I said weakly, getting to my feet.

  “I will,” Ray said cheerfully.

  I shook my head as I was leaving the office. Maybe something about this hidden illness was making him crazy as well.

  “What was that about?” Cameron asked as I came back into the main room. I was relieved to see that Braxton had already left. I wasn’t su
re if I was ready to tell him that I had apparently taken over from him in training recruits. I didn’t know how Braxton would react to that news; he was unpredictable sometimes.

  I just shrugged at Cameron. “Just Ray being Ray,” I told him, even though I knew that wasn’t an answer at all.

  Cameron’s brows knit together, but he had other things on his mind evidently. “Hey, have you noticed anything strange about Ray lately?” Cameron asked in an undertone as he steered me out of the clubhouse with a hand at my elbow.

  I looked over at him in surprise. Maybe Cameron didn’t know any more about Ray’s mysterious decline in health than I did. I frowned. “He’s not looking so good lately,” I said slowly.

  “No, he isn’t,” Cameron agreed. He folded his arms across his chest, narrowing his eyes at me. “And now he’s given you some secret mission?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, shaking my head. “That meeting had nothing to do with Ray’s health. I promise I’d tell you if it did.”

  “All right,” Cameron said.

  “He wants me to train some new guys,” I finally blurted out. “But don’t tell Braxton yet. I don’t want him to feel like I’ve replaced him or something.”

  Cameron stared at me for a moment and then laughed, shaking his head. “Trust me, Braxton’s not going to care,” he said. “He’ll probably be relieved actually. He hates training recruits. Thinks it cramps his style or whatever.”

  “Oh good,” I said, feeling relieved.

  “Braxton’s going to be the least of your worries,” Cameron mused, staring off into the distance. He shook his head, looking back at me. “You’re going to need to keep a close eye on these new guys. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police found out that we were recruiting and tried to send in a rat.”

  I groaned. “Great,” I said. “How will I even know?”